Time running out for RI illegals
Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Following the end on Monday of the three-month amnesty program, more than 400,000 Indonesians working illegally in Malaysia are facing punishments of being whipped, fined or imprisoned before their deportation.
As of Monday evening, there had been no last-minute surge of illegal immigrants leaving the Malaysian Peninsula and East Malaysia, meaning that up to 800,000 foreign illegals, including 400,000 Indonesians, remain in the country.
Officials at the manpower and transmigration ministry said that only a few thousand workers had returned home through Riau, Nunukan in East Kalimantan, Belawan port in North Sumatra and Surabaya in East Java.
Malaysian authorities insisted that the crackdown to oust all illegal immigrants in the country would proceed as 650,000 police and volunteers were on standby as the midnight Jan. 31 deadline drew nearer.
Home minister Azmi Khalid confirmed that the Malaysian government would go ahead with the planned raid and illegals would be punished, regardless of their country of origin.
Employers face up to a year in prison and fines of up to 50,000 ringgit for each illegal worker, with those hiring more than five illegals also facing a flogging.
Illegal immigrants may be imprisoned for up to two years, fined up to 10,000 ringgit (US$2,600) and given six strokes of the cane.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch, have strongly criticized the government's plan to deploy hundreds of thousands of volunteers belonging to neighborhood security groups in the sweep.
Members of the People's Volunteer Corps, an organization of uniformed part-timers who have some policing powers, will receive cash rewards for each migrant arrested, an economic incentive that Human Rights Watch worries could lead to "vigilantism".
More than 20 activists of non-governmental organization (NGO) Migrant Care staged a demonstration in front of the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta on Monday, calling for the suspension of the raid, which they said would certainly affect relations between the two countries.
Organization coordinator Anis Hidayat said Malaysia's economy would collapse if all low-paid Indonesian workers were ousted and their deportation would only make the unemployment problem in Indonesia more complicated.
Since the Malaysian government introduced a three-month amnesty program for illegal workers in October of last year -- which was extended following the Dec. 26 tsunami disaster -- only some 280,000 of the Indonesian illegal workers in Malaysia have benefited from the amnesty.
This is partly due to conditions whereby many workers' salaries have allegedly been withheld by their employers and those employed in remote areas have not yet received information on the amnesty program.
Director general of labor export at the manpower and transmigration ministry I Gde Arke was optimistic that the raid against illegal workers would not be as dramatic as the mass media and NGOs have feared.
"Both governments have agreed to settle the issue in the spirit of ASEAN and treat the troubled immigrants humanely, both during the crackdown and their deportation," he said, citing that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was scheduled to visit Malaysia on Feb. 14 to discuss the issue and the reconstruction of Aceh.
More than 70 people died of starvation and numerous diseases and many others were fined and jailed when Malaysian authorities ousted more than 700,000 Indonesian illegal migrants from that country in 2002.